Man yesterday was SLAMMED at the Evil Day Job. Super duper productive but holy crap busy. I’d scheduled an orientation meeting with our new grad students and the rest of the team to introduce everybody and give an overview of what everybody’s working on. And while I had them, I made the entire team, boss […]
Character
Thoughts on Gaining Reader Empathy
A month or two ago, I picked up The Hero’s 2 Journeys by Michael Hague and Christopher Vogler. It was on sale at Audible for $4.95. And looking right now, it’s still only $5.95. I say it’s WORTH EVERY PENNY. This is essentially a 3 hour writer’s workshop where both these gentlemen take us through […]
Monday Meanderings And Thoughts on Strong Female Characters
This morning’s lifetrack, Follow the Flower from Under the Tuscan Sun. Because it’s Monday and I need some cheerful to balance out the fact that the AC was off in our building all weekend and my office is a sauna. Summer semester starts this week. I move on to recording all my lectures for the new […]
The Danger of Making A Villain TOO Smart…Lessons from Bones
Okay first, I have to share the link to the FUNNIEST post I have EVER read about writing love scenes, courtesy of Delilah S. Dawson, who’s guest blogging over for Chuck Wendig. I’ll share the link again at the end because it’s a nice cheer up and belly laugh. So last night was the Bones […]
Noodling on Nora
Anyone who’s hung out around me for any period of time knows I’m a huge Nora Roberts fan. The woman is hella prolific with over 200 novels under her belt since that 1979 snowstorm that led her to writing her first. We all know I admire efficiency. I also admire her consistency, her success, and […]
Creating Sympathetic Characters: A Lesson From Lost Girl
I think I mentioned last week that one of the reasons that I avoided Lost Girl as a show was because the heroine was a succubus. A demon (or, in this case, Fae), who feeds off sexual energy. Historically I steer clear because this invariably sets up a dynamic that does not fit with my […]
Is Normal Boring?
I was reading an article earlier about 8 Reasons Intelligent Writers Must Read Twilight. The author makes a lot of good points. No matter how much we might like to bash Twlight (and we all know I am NOT a fan), it’s been ragingly successful, and savvy authors would do well to try and figure out WHY. […]
Using Time Orientation In Your Writing
I never got around to blogging yesterday. I was in a marathon meeting all yesterday morning and out most of the afternoon because I hyperextended a nerve. I am, apparently, just that talented. Was going into plank pose and something went crunch. Yippee. The good news is, though it hurts like an SOB at the […]
A Different Kind of Heroine
So I got into a discussion the other day with pal Mhairi Simpson, trying to get at what the average reader really gets out of 50 Shades and Twilight. This was a more general discussion, not looking at the terrifying psychological implications (I’ve done that), but trying to see what it is that women truly […]
Where’s The Line For Irredeemable?
A couple weeks ago, I saw that Ghosts of Girlfriends Past was coming on TV, so I set it to DVR for when we didn’t have anything else to watch. That turned out to be last night. We sat through maybe the first twenty minutes before turning it off and deleting it. Why? Because I didn’t see […]